This 6. 5 m ( 21 ft) baby robot — developed by Hollywood visual effects studios
behind movies like Aliens Vs. Predator and Star Trek — was unveiled at the Spanish
Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo that opened to the public May 1st. Its
animatronics are reportedly realistic enough to allow the baby to move and giggle,
but thankfully not realistic enough to require diaper changes. The exhibit is meant to
represent dreams of the future. Maybe Rosemary’s dreams ... this is one scary baby!

LET’S FACE IT

Like MIT’s Kismet and KIST’s FRi,
Mertz is an active vision head robot that
recognizes and reacts to faces and
expressions. It was built in 2004 primarily
by Lijin Aryananda and Jeff Weber at the
MIT Media Lab. Its main purpose was to
research socially situated learning similar
to an infant’s learning process, so it was
programmed to track faces and bright
objects, and could repeat the sounds of
words extracted from audio data. Unlike
other robots that typically don’t get out
much (interacting mainly with researchers
in the lab), Mertz was designed to be able
to “live” around people and absorb
information for many hours.

Mertz has a total of 13 degrees of
freedom, including individually actuated eyebrows and lips, has two cameras
for vision, and a microphone. It’s about 25 cm ( 10 inches) tall and weighs
2 kg ( 4. 25 lbs). One of the main issues involved is how to interact while
simultaneously learning from a person. Another problem was the ambient
noise level of the robot’s surroundings. In the lab it was quiet, allowing the
robot to more easily parse words, but in the world it was very noisy.

HELP FROM WHAT AILAS YOU

At Hanover Messe 2010 — a trade fair for industrial technology — DFKI
Bremen showcased a new humanoid robot called AILA which is demonstrating
how robots might be used interactively in dynamic environments with humans by
2020. The system uses SemProM (Semantic Product Memory) which it combines
with its computer vision when handling objects of varying shapes and sizes. For
example,AILA can adjust how it holds a bottle based on its weight and fragility.
Each product or object stores and communicates its properties such as its size,
where it needs to be transported, which production line it belongs to, and so on
through RFID.

Looking a bit like Toyota’s Robina, the feminine AILA is equipped with two
laser range finders, stereo vision in its head, a 3D camera for object recognition
and orientation, and an RFID reader in its left hand. It has a total of 22 degrees of
freedom (wheels x2; two arms x7; torso x4; head x2) and moves on a wheeled
base containing six wheels. Thanks to this wheel configuration,AILA can turn in
any direction and is stable on smooth to moderately rough surfaces.